This posthumous volume brings together the poems of Tom
Andrews, whose untimely death in 2001 cut off a career
marked by early achievement and remarkable innovation.
It comprises two previously published books (The Brother's
Country and The Hemophiliac's Motorcycle),
two unpublished manuscripts (25 Short Films About Poetry and The
Temptation of Saint Augustine), and closes with two
late uncollected poems. The willingness to experiment,
to explore the borders between poetry and other art forms,
including film, novel, and memoir, is everywhere in this
dazzling text.

"The leaves just burst from his fingers. He had that
odd stance to the world and its language that made whatever
he wrote seem new and undiscovered, like treasure hauled
up into the sealight from the ocean floor."
--Charles Wright

NORTH
OF THE FUTURE

Did
I displace you, Lord, by being here?
Does my body crowd out your body?
Afflict me with Attention Surplus Disorder
so I can see what is in front of my face.

Sunned
sparrows dart and mar each other's
minor voices. The imperial River rots
like a stone. Who arranged this barrage
of applause and decay? Ancient of Days, be with me.

Wind
panhandles my eyes. Black night licks at my song.
The catalpa tree ponders its canny name.
Lord, move, just this once, yourself out of the way
so I can see the endless spaces you fill without you in them.

Charity,
mercy, hope, faith, compassion, love:
a golem made of grief?
I feel his greased limbs circling
in my limbs. And then I don't feel him.

The
live world finding a choir is a soul.
The soul is very small: it fits in the hand like a hazelnut.
When I die I will discover
there are people in the world.

--Tom
Andrews

Copyright c 2002 by the Literary Estate of Tom
Andrews. May not be reproduced without permission.